After Ever
by Asterie-Smiles
Summary: Why don’t you start at the beginning, with a man named Jack, and fill in the blanks? Think of it like a puzzle. JackRoseNine


**After Ever  
****by S-Star**

**Fandom:** Doctor Who (new doctor)  
**Disclaimer: **I don't think I could fool anyone into thinking I had any rights to the Doctor and co if I tried.  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **Jack/Nine/Rose OT3  
**Summary: **Why don't you start at the beginning, with a man named Jack, and fill in the blanks? Think of it like a puzzle.  
**Beta: **Minnow53, and thanks to DKFairy for discussing it and spotting the non-DW TV reference.  
**AN: **New fandom, new strange and somewhat incoherent writing style. I'm still not entirely sure whether this makes sense, but I think I've read it too many times to judge…

**  
After Ever**

'Once upon a time' is probably where you should begin, but time is relative, as you know better than (almost) anyone. So, maybe 'once upon an ever-changing time and place, there was – is – a man named Jack'. You could take it from there. Remember, this is your story, your love story: tell it that way.

_So, why don't you start at the beginning, with a man named Jack, and fill in the blanks? Think of it like a puzzle: first word that comes into your head, like one of the Time Agency qualification exams, which you're certain are only there to make sure you're not crazy. Go. Jack: jack-off, off-night, night air, air-con – just get to the point. Air-con…con-man. Man-whore. (Is that what you were looking for?)_

Like all good stories, this one begins when you come to the aid of a damsel in distress, hanging from a barrage balloon in the middle of World War II. She's cute: curvy, blonde, early twenty-first century – easy mark. (And there's the man-whore part.) Of course, she turns out to be smarter than she looks, with quick wits and a not-quite-handsome-but-still-strangely-alluring prince from a faraway planet, who has his own, non-stolen spacecraft and whips out a Sonic Screwdriver as opposed to your banana. (Bigger, harder, longer-lasting, and, yeah, it might not taste as good, but – imagery aside – you can't expect ambrosia. Then again, knowing the Doctor…)

_Well, what are you going to do now? Once upon a time, the princess and her oddly-appealing prince flew away to the furthest stars and lived happily ever after…is that what you want? You've never liked fairy-tales: you don't believe in bullshit. Here's another puzzle: turn Jack to shit in five steps. You can waste hours trying, but you can't solve it. (So Jack must be untouchable.) Can you say the same for this story? The situation's insoluble, the puzzle undoable, the ending inevitable… Maybe it's time to write your own. _

You start to think outside the box, stepping out of the TARDIS on to the ground of places you've never seen before and times you'd rather forget, and you consider going down the romance novel route: every star looks more radiant, every alien more extraordinary, every item of period dress more exquisite when the three of you are together. Beautiful people in dreamlike settings, too cheesy and fake even for you, so you try another tactic. A planet with black and white checkerboard fields reminds you of Alice Through the Looking Glass, and there are only seven plots anyway, so why not take Wonderland? Typecast** - **the Doctor with a grin, always eluding you, must be the Cheshire Cat; Rose Alice, all wide-eyes and wonderment; you… the Mad Hatter, at this rate, because none of this would make sense if you wrote it down, anyway. (But in the end, wasn't Wonderland just a dream, a drug-induced hallucination, a children's movie? The fantastical Carroll really the mathematician Dodgson? Perhaps you're going about this the wrong way.)

_Then do the math. One princess, one Time Lord, and one dashing Captain walk into a bar. (Stop me if you've heard this one.) Add two double vodka-tonics to each, then another for good measure. Take away 20 of Rose's inhibitions, 10 of Jack's, and 0.001 of the Doctor's; then go forth and multiply. Keeping up? So, if the Doctor pays with psychic paper that looks like £25 and gets £2.50 change, how many Daleks does it take to change a lightbulb? You think it adds up to a massive headache._

Really, it's not too difficult to figure out. You're not in Kansas anymore, and you can see that some people here have no brains and others have two hearts, if you look. The fairy-tale prince loves his princess; body, heart and soul, and it's intense and painful enough with just the one heart beating against hers; two must be agony, would tear him apart. But when you think about it, really think about it, maybe there's a reason why the strength of his devotion hasn't brought him to his knees, an answer to the question why he's still laughing even though she's nearly been killed. (Again). One Doctor, two hearts. One Rose, one Jack. My, my, what a conundrum.

_Can you solve this one, Jack? Differentiate his feelings for you with respect to his feelings for Rose: D(J)/D(R) equals impossible before you've absorbed x number of alcohol units. Or, think for a moment. Make a leap of logic, follow your instincts, solve the unsolvable equation with no constants and no clue. Pretend for a minute that there is no difference, that somehow JR, so D(J)/D(R) equals 1 after all. You're good at puzzles, never wrong, so maybe it's just that simple, maybe you're overthinking this whole thing, and maybe you should get back to bed before one of them realises the reassuring four heartbeats are mysteriously minus one._

It's not unprecedented: there are three wheels on a tricycle and it's more stable than a bike with its two. Time has three tenses: past, present, future. Three gods in one, three syllables in 'forever', three beds in the TARDIS (two unused). The prince, the princess and the knight errant isn't your average fairy-tale, but it worked for Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.(You should know, you walked in on them; were even asked if you'd like to join in.) Besides, you once read a version of 'Little Red Riding Hood' in which she ended up screwing the wolf on grandma's bed, so happy ever after normal must be a state of mind; especially when you consider that you're travelling through time and space with a princess who has a weakness for soggy chips smothered in gravy and a prince who has a Sonic Screwdriver (which is actually as impressive as your own, thank you very much). Besides, in this case, you don't have the suspense of wondering whether the wolf will respect you in the morning: you know you have a future together, because you've been there, you've seen it. But it doesn't really matter, because time is relative, as you three know better than anyone. Happy ever: before, now, and after

_And scratched into the steel plating of a console in a Time Agency building not yet dreamed of, bustling with people, left to dust centuries ago, a list:_ _Jack 4 Cassie Rachel Amy Thomas Joshua Tina Peter Scribble. Next to it, in marker pen, cold and mocking and perfectly precise: Jack 4 Who this week?_

Yes, you think. That's about right.


End file.
